Socializing, with Clowns

I. Social Media

I spent my day-off today online, puttering around with social media for the store. Now the new IG is up and running, www.instagram.com/svdpmpls
and FB is purring along as smoothly as ever, I reactivated our dormant Twitter account. 

Maybe this'll change when I've been "svdpmpls" on all three sites longer, but  the way I see it now, Facebook is for locals and "friends"--it always feels like a relative might read what you wrote; 
IG is for pictures and younger people (under forty-five) (and people who stage their photos); 
and on Twitter you can talk about politics and ideas with strangers from all over.

After 40+ posts and almost 90 followers in two weeks, yesterday I introduced myself on our IG. 
I took the selfie in front of a mirrored mural of La Mexicana Grocery, where I wait for the bus going home.
 

This work is pretty much all I've been doing and thinking about. It's fun, and interesting,  . . . though in the end it's just more of us humans.

Reminds me of a Catholic priest I knew who took a leave from the priesthood after fifteen years, hoping to fall in love and make a life with someone.
Four years later, he returned to the priesthood.

I've always remembered what he said about the reality of romance:

"I thought it would be like a Broadway show, but in the end, it was just another person."

Ha! Social media's like that too. 
One might think it would be shinier people saying and doing better (or, possibly, worse) things, but it's just more people saying and doing the things people do, amplified.

Not much glamor to it, really.
Dave Barry was right (was it Dave Barry? now I can't find the quote)--the Internet is like CB radio, with typing.

Still, I like social media pretty well. Obviously, since I love blogging, it's more of the sort of thing I would like-- to generate and share pictures and words.  

I'm not keen on the technical side of it (one reason I've been slower than I might be), but these sites want people of all abilities to use them, and they do make it awfully easy.
 I've only had a few glitches I couldn't figure out--mostly from things I don't know about my phone, I think.

I was telling a friend that after I get this nonprofit's social media up and running, I could make a lot of money being a Social Media Manager. 
I probably could even do that now.
But I can't imagine doing this work for a business I didn't love. It's so intimate, it'd be like blogging for someone else.

(Also I revile the "talk cute" jargon of social media marketing. It's evil fakery, and embarrassingly see-through at that. It's like when adults who don't like children talk to children as if they do. Ick, ick, ick. No.)

Of course I wrote nonfiction books on assignment for a publisher I didn't love, but in fact I did love each of the topics I wrote about––I turned down topics I wasn't interested in––and I did love that the books were going be read by teenagers.

What I love most is having a reason to delve deeper into things--and then to talk about what I discover.

II. Send in the Clowns

A couple days ago, the volunteer who sorts artwork showed me a framed lithograph, a signed artist's proof that'd been donated (from someone's estate) to the store this week. 
He, the volunteer, had looked up the artist––Wayne Howell–– and hadn't found much, just a couple of WH's prints listed on ebay for a couple hundred dollars. He'd priced ours at $99 and wanted me to photograph it and post it on FB, to attract possible buyers.

I wasn't very interested---partly because it's a pain to photograph anything under glass and avoid getting glare--and also the print was unappealing---a crying clown on the witness stand in front of a judge & jury.
What?

But this morning it all of a sudden struck me:
A clown on trial, with a clown jury?
How perfect for this week of the Senate's impeachment trial of Trump!

Before I posted it on Instagram, I googled the artist. Like our volunteer, I didn't find much. Then I checked the IG hashtag #waynehowell. There were only 4 images---and one was a companion piece to ours! 

No information, but...

CRAZY WILD---it's about Watergate!!! I can't believe how perfectly that lined up!

Recognize the puppets and puppet masters?

I don't get the top puppeteer---"Kong Power". Do you?
 
I see Pinocchio, Charlie McCarthy, Henry Kissinger, [don't know],  Nixon, Howdy Doody, and Ollie, Kukla, and ________[that's not Fran. Who is it? Nixon himself?].

Anyway, then I posted both images, and I left a message for the person who'd posted the 2nd one, and we had a small chat. Neat! That made me happy.